NAS build input solicitation... =)

Not sure if y'all still do this but I was hoping to get some feedback for a build I'm doing for a NAS server that's replacing my aging Acer WHS box. It's been many many years since my last build and I was hoping I could get a sanity check on the following components. I'm woefully out of date on the whole AMD vs. Intel situation and what the longevity of the socket platforms are.

Primary function of the box will be NAS duties. I'll be using a software drive pooling solution for redundancy (no RAID) and the box will live in the basement out of sight, out of mind for 99% of it's life. I want to treat it like the existing Acer H340 WHS but give it a little more grunt to run it as a Plex server for transcoding, bit torrent downloader, and backup source. It will be running headless for the most part. I'll also be running Windows Server 2012 R2 as I have a key for that and the drive pooling software I'm using runs on windows.

here's the partlist I cobbled together on newegg.ca...

CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 Haswell 54W TDP (Why: can't bring myself to buy a pentium G3220... but maybe the i3-4130T that runs at 35W?)Motherboard: Asus H87I-Plus LGA 1150 mini-ITX (why: 6x Sata and mini-itx to keep the box small)Memory: Team elite 8GB DDR3 1600 (why: just the cheapest stick I could find and leaves one dimm free for later expansion)Case: Fractal Design Node 304 (why: 6x internal 3.5" bays for HDD expansion and is small mini-itx but still supports ATX PS's)PS: SeaSonic S12II 430W 80Plus Bronze (why: the cheapest 80Plus Bronze PS I could find from a reputable manufacturer that has 6x Sata cables)SSD: Crucial M500 120 GB (why: just to use as a system drive and isolate system from drive pool)

General Questions:

1) am I missing an obvious AMD CPU choice? I'm looking in the $60-$140 range and it looks like Intel still dominates in the performance category. Are the advantages of getting the built in radeon graphics worth losing the lower power profile and better performance of the haswell chips? and no, games are not a priority.

2) am I overdoing it with the powersupply? I used a few PS calculators I googled and even with 6 SATA drives, my requirements are in the 200-250W range. I want to keep the box as power efficient as possible since electricity does cost money still these days (one of the reasons why I love the WHS as it's just a dinky Atom processor).

3) am I crazy going with a mini-itx box? would I be saving myself a lot of hassle if I stuck with mini-atx or another platform that's more popular?

4) am I just generally going overboard on the specs? should I be getting a low wattage AMD or Intel chip (25-35W TDP)? would that be fast enough still to do transcoding of high bitrate HD sources?

Thanks for all the help. I can't believe it's been 10+ years since my last rig build. Too bad I'm doing a boring NAS rig vs. a gaming rig.. lol..

Edit: I should also mention that longevity and reliability are the primary factors here. Cost is secondary but I'd still like to keep power usage and cost to a minimum. I've had my WHS for 6-7+ years now and besides having many HDDs fail on my over the years, the box itself is still seemingly going strong but the OS is getting long in the tooth (32 bit, 2TB drive limit, getting "slow" handling my many large multi-gig HD media files). Thanks!

A G3430 and two DIMMs will probably perform better than the i3 with a single stick, and will probably be cheaper. As for the 54W TDP, they never get that far. I have my 3430 cooled by an old Freezer7 with no fan - the only fan is a 92mm fan in the back of the case, and it's an elcheapo Coolermaster Elite 343.

I'm running the board you suggest, and I'm pretty happy with it, apart from it not working with my 8GB DIMMs.

A G3430 and two DIMMs will probably perform better than the i3 with a single stick, and will probably be cheaper. As for the 54W TDP, they never get that far. I have my 3430 cooled by an old Freezer7 with no fan - the only fan is a 92mm fan in the back of the case, and it's an elcheapo Coolermaster Elite 343.

I'm running the board you suggest, and I'm pretty happy with it, apart from it not working with my 8GB DIMMs.

That's surprising that a g3430 would outperform the i3 4130. They're within 100mhz of each other and I would think the i3's multithreading would give it quite a boost. Of course, cost wise, the pentium would be half the cost but we're talking a difference of what... $60? I can afford that luxury.

If dual channel makes that big of a difference, would a "best of both worlds" solution be that I should splurge and max out the memory and put in 2x8GB sticks. I noticed there's a sale right now on 2x8GB 1333 DDR3 CL9 for $140 CAD. Or should I stick with 1600 DDR3 (CL11)?

Go for a platform that supports ECC (either AMD's desktop line, or a Xeon).

Building a storage server without ECC is just asking for silent data corruption. Even with ZFS data in RAM is treated as trusted, so without ECC RAM all that data integrity protection counts for nothing.

Bit error rates (%error per bit) have not particularly changed for the last decade, but capacities have gone up by an order of magnitude or two. The chance of actually encountering an error have thus gone up massively.

I don't know. I'm assuming it's something to do with the XMP on the sticks, and the G3430's inability to run at DDR3-1866. The sticks work fine on an older B75 chipset Asus board with a G1620 Celeron and an i3-2120.

Go for a platform that supports ECC (either AMD's desktop line, or a Xeon).

Building a storage server without ECC is just asking for silent data corruption. Even with ZFS data in RAM is treated as trusted, so without ECC RAM all that data integrity protection counts for nothing.

Bit error rates (%error per bit) have not particularly changed for the last decade, but capacities have gone up by an order of magnitude or two. The chance of actually encountering an error have thus gone up massively.

Thanks for the info. going ECC is probably overkill for my needs. the main extent of the data that's constantly being read/written are just video files. The important stuff doesn't get read often at all. something to think about in the future though

Go for a platform that supports ECC (either AMD's desktop line, or a Xeon).

Building a storage server without ECC is just asking for silent data corruption. Even with ZFS data in RAM is treated as trusted, so without ECC RAM all that data integrity protection counts for nothing.

Bit error rates (%error per bit) have not particularly changed for the last decade, but capacities have gone up by an order of magnitude or two. The chance of actually encountering an error have thus gone up massively.

ECC memory and capable boards do carry a small premium, but server grade components are more reliable than budget boards anyway. If a person is buying an off the shelf NAS, fine, but for anyone who can put together a DIY server the choice of anything other than ECC and ZFS is unfathomable. The barrier to entry for a ZFS server is ridiculously low with FreeNAS; it's simpler to deploy than a Windows Storage Server build by several orders of magnitude.

Regarding ECC memory, it looks like 4th Gen i3's do support it... it's just that ECC capable Motherboard + RAM is an additional cost I wasn't really prepped for... Hmm... I'm also reading how ECC ram is more crucial with ZFS (freeNAS). is there something inherent in NTFS that makes ECC less critical?

Edit: Did some research and it looks like even the synology's consumer level NAS products don't have ECC memory. Maybe not having ECC isn't the end of the world.

Regarding ECC memory, it looks like 4th Gen i3's do support it... it's just that ECC capable Motherboard + RAM is an additional cost I wasn't really prepped for... Hmm... I'm also reading how ECC ram is more crucial with ZFS (freeNAS). is there something inherent in NTFS that makes ECC less critical?

ECC does matter if you're not using ZFS. If you're using a non-checksumming filesystem, you face bit-errors from both the HDDs themselves and data passing through RAM. With ZFS, your data is vulnerable when passing through RAM, and errors there can prevent the HDD checksumming from working correctly (either by calculating the checksum incorrectly, or checksumming a corrupted file). Using non-ECC memory on a storage server running NTFS can still result in data being written to drives incorrectly if it corrupted whilst in memory.

so for ~$700 (give or take), I can get a transcoding capable, low power, ECC-enabled, NAS. Dual NICs, IPMI, 4xDIMM for even more ram, and a butt load of SATA ports on the mobo if I ever change cases... the powersupply is probably overkill. I just had that on my parts list cause it was haswell ready and 80plus Gold.

The only real downside is the crappy asrock video chip but there's nothing stopping you from adding in a PCI-e video card. Though as a nas, video isn't a req. I would probably add in an eSata expansion card since I have an eSata enclosure already and this mobo doesn't have an eSata port.

compared to a 2-bay NAS, sure, $700 is a lot of money. But I need at *least* 4 bays (ideally 6+) and would like the system to be capable of running many downloads/torrents/etc, hosting a plex server with transcoding, uploading backups to a preferred cloud service... $700 is actually cheap compared to those "dedicated" nas boxes with 4+ bays and ECC ram (don't even think any of them are transcoding capable).

If you do know of a dedicated NAS that hits most of these requirements at below the budget of the DIY build, I'm all ears =)

I already get everything above except ECC and transcoding on my 5+ year old Acer easystore h340 that I'm trying to replace. And that box was $400 when I bought it.

Because compared to a DIY NAS, they're ridiculously underpowered and overpriced.

Not necessarily. If you choose the right NAS unit, they're more than powerful enough, they're WAY more stable than a homebrew, and they're mostly a set-it-and-forget-it device.

I've been there, done that with the homebrews (my first one was dual Celerons on an ABit BP6, right up to recently with a Haswell Pentium), and the various NAS OS and even Windows Server, and they just need more TLC than NAS appliances.

Heck, I lost a drive in my Asustor last week. I got an email about it. When I got home I popped out the drive with the orange light, stuck in a new one, the NAS rebuilt on the new drive. No other input. I didn't have to log in to the web management or anything. I got another email when it was done rebuilding.

Assuming you're referencing the post directly above yours, $700 gets you a very capable NAS in a great looking chassis that will run circles around any off the shelf NAS at a similar price point; and is expandable to boot!

For $100 you get a dual core 750Mhz CPU and 256 MB of RAM. I doubt that thing can saturate a GbE link, and forget about transcoding (if that's your thing) or any other advanced functionality. If what you're looking for is a remedial 2-bay device that will serve files at 10-15Mbps, it's difficult to compete with off the shelf. Once you start looking at units priced north of $300, the value just isn't there compared to building it yourself.

Not necessarily. If you choose the right NAS unit, they're more than powerful enough, they're WAY more stable than a homebrew, and they're mostly a set-it-and-forget-it device.

Define powerful "enough." I've been running a FreeNAS build for a few years, it's been rock solid. Never had a single issue with it, and the interface is just as intuitive as the Netgear ReadyNAS it replaced, which it runs circles around. There was a bit of a learning curve with ZFS, but that was because it was a feature I wanted - there are much simpler options.

It isn't for everyone - my Dad is more computer savvy than most people his age, but I wouldn't recommend a DIY NAS for him, for example - but for anyone who is capable of building a PC, it should at least be a consideration.

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I've been there, done that with the homebrews (my first one was dual Celerons on an ABit BP6, right up to recently with a Haswell Pentium), and the various NAS OS and even Windows Server, and they just need more TLC than NAS appliances.

Heck, I lost a drive in my Asustor last week. I got an email about it.

My FreeNAS will do that ...

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When I got home I popped out the drive with the orange light, stuck in a new one, the NAS rebuilt on the new drive. No other input. I didn't have to log in to the web management or anything. I got another email when it was done rebuilding.

But I don't think it will do this. I've never lost a drive (knock on wood), but I think there is a manual component involved with replacing a RAIDZ2 on a FreeNAS box. Still, it's a tradeoff I'm willing to accept, considering the upside.

Look at the Dell T20, smaller than the T110 holds up to 6 drives... workstationy but nice. I have one, had to add a NIC to have it be a vSphere host but otherwise I would say it is better than the HP Microserver.

Look at the Dell T20, smaller than the T110 holds up to 6 drives... workstationy but nice. I have one, had to add a NIC to have it be a vSphere host but otherwise I would say it is better than the HP Microserver.

Look at the Dell T20, smaller than the T110 holds up to 6 drives... workstationy but nice. I have one, had to add a NIC to have it be a vSphere host but otherwise I would say it is better than the HP Microserver.

Veeeery interesting....

if you buy the barebones version (no OS and no Drives) of the T20, does it come with all the cabling and drive rails for all the bays?

Look at the Dell T20, smaller than the T110 holds up to 6 drives... workstationy but nice. I have one, had to add a NIC to have it be a vSphere host but otherwise I would say it is better than the HP Microserver.

Veeeery interesting....

if you buy the barebones version (no OS and no Drives) of the T20, does it come with all the cabling and drive rails for all the bays?

Let me answer my own question... I saw some pictures of a T20 review and even though the system only had a single drive, all the sata and power cabling including the drive caddys was included. The only downside I can foresee is that the upper drive bays is a bit of a PITA to access if I ever need to pull the drive out when it fails. Still, lots of PCIe slots for esata and whatnot... I can't believe this system was $200 USD earlier this year...

Define powerful "enough." I've been running a FreeNAS build for a few years, it's been rock solid. Never had a single issue with it, and the interface is just as intuitive as the Netgear ReadyNAS it replaced, which it runs circles around. There was a bit of a learning curve with ZFS, but that was because it was a feature I wanted - there are much simpler options.

It isn't for everyone - my Dad is more computer savvy than most people his age, but I wouldn't recommend a DIY NAS for him, for example - but for anyone who is capable of building a PC, it should at least be a consideration.

Well, the Asustor is happy to:

Download from BittorrentDownload from UsenetPlay to two clients via DLNAServe files to three PCs (two on AC wifi and one on Gigabit)Run Sickbeard and do it's post-processingRun MySQL for XBMC library sharing

All at the same time, using two 4TB WD Green drives in RAID 1, which are probably the slowest drives out there. Everything is perfectly stable and no stuttering on video playback. I don't know why you'd need anything more unless you're running iSCSI targets. It'll transfer files across Gigabit at 85MB/s read and about 65MB/s write, again to slowass drives.

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But I don't think it will do this. I've never lost a drive (knock on wood), but I think there is a manual component involved with replacing a RAIDZ2 on a FreeNAS box. Still, it's a tradeoff I'm willing to accept, considering the upside.

I'm still unsure what the upside is? ZFS? More physical space for drives?

Heck, most people will get away with a two-bay NAS with a pair of drives, and be perfectly happy. With easy capacity expansion on almost every NAS, it's simple to go from say two 3TB drives to a pair of 5TB drives by just swapping drives one at a time and allowing the NAS to sync up.

Even the little Synology I have is able to run the majority of what I've listed above, and it only has a pathetic single core ARM with 256MB of RAM, probably less computing power than most people's microwaves, and it's using 5400rpm laptop drives. It does bog down a bit when you start doing heavy stuff though, but then again the Synology was a third the price of the Asustor.

Well, I guess if it does everything you want, then you're in good shape. Out of curiosity, which Asustor model do you have?

My current FreeNAS server is sitting in an 8-bay chassis which is fully populated with 4TB drives. I upgraded the chassis recently - previously it was a 4-bay unit (that chassis is now serving duty as my Lab NAS). When I originally built it in the 4-bay chassis, I couldn't find anything with 4-bays which would offer me comparable prifce/performance to something I could build myself - the same was true when I upgraded - for $200 I definitely couldn't find a full unit with 8 bays which would compete with my DIY kit on price.

Maybe 4 bays is the delta - perhaps if all one requires is a 2-bay unit purchasing off the shelf is a better value.

Sure an off the shelf box would work but I feel more secure with my NAS4Free. Knowing that I can swap out a power supply or memory or whatever if one were to go bad. Or even take the drives out & put them in another box.

I say if your going to be a little paranoid and think about data backup go all the way. Think and plan for failed hardware in X years. Will that off the shelf box allow you to get your data somehow? With a diy setup it is almost guaranteed you can rescue the data.